Misconceptions, Maybe
by signelchan
Summary: Sometimes wearing a baggy jacket when one is a skinny woman is a red flag that something's amiss. And sometimes that's just dead wrong.


It all started when Heather decided it would just be easier to wear one of Alejandro's jackets than find one of her own. For any other person out there, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal to borrow a jacket that was, honestly, warmer than anything they owned, but any other person wouldn't have been someone who had once been famous in life, and even though it was years after that fame had diminished, there were still people out there who cared about her and her life.

Naturally, this meant that when she got to the store that she was literally running to for a handful of things, there was someone there waiting for someone famous or ex-famous to come in. And the paparazzi only get paid when they've got pictures and a juicy headline to sell—and what would have been more perfect than pictures of this reality show star in a jacket much too big for her? The farfetched ideas that could come from that were endless!

And the one that everyone ultimately latched onto was probably the silliest of them all, because all she had done was wear a baggy jacket because she wasn't motivated enough to find one of her own. Days after that trip to the store, her and Alejandro were both having to field completely baseless, yet totally concerned, questions from literally everyone they knew about the rumors that one of them (as in, the one who had been seen out at the store) was with child. At first, it was absolutely hilarious to them, but then it got old rather quick when they realized that because this lie was floating around about them, their lives were going to be filled with many more cameras and a lot more intrusion into their privacy.

Rather than make a big deal about it and make the case that it definitely wasn't true—which it wasn't—they decided to have fun with it. After all, it was the beginning of a cold winter, and men's jackets were so much warmer to be wearing outside in the snow. So, as an intentional misleading of the news-crazed public, every time they went out, no matter where it was, Heather was wearing one of those baggy jackets she snagged from her boyfriend's half of the closet. The media ate it up and became absolutely convinced that she was doing it to hide something from them all.

Really, she was doing it because it was in her nature to be a complete jerk whenever she could.

The culmination of the entire situation came about a month after the original pictures had been taken, and throughout that month there had been a _lot_ of times where the media had been convinced that they were correct. But in this particular instance, they were sure they were going to get the defining proof that their silly pregnancy rumors were the hard truth; the people they had taken to nearly stalking were going to show them, once and for all, that rumors were just rumors and that just because a skinny woman chose to wear a big coat didn't mean she was hiding anything.

Naturally, they chose to prove this point in the aisles of a baby clothing store. The workers of said store were displeased at the members of the paparazzi milling around, but they didn't say anything because as long as no pictures were being taken of merchandise, they really didn't care what happened. Even then, if pictures were taken, as long as the store got part of the profits, there wasn't much they were going to do. So that meant that a small army of people aimed with cameras were walking around, just waiting for something to happen between the couple they had followed inside.

This couple, of course, had no intentions of having anything happen between them that actually mattered, because everything they were doing was one hundred percent fake. They were picking clothes off racks, talking amongst themselves about them, and putting them back. To keep up the lie that had been perpetuated over the past month, even in the incredibly stifling store, Heather was still wearing one of those damn jackets, and she made sure to loudly say, on several occasions, that she really wanted to take it off. That was what the photographers wanted, not to see some domestic baby clothes shopping, but to actually see proof of the baby they were wrongly convinced was real.

When the time came and she threw the jacket off, entire racks of clothing went flying as everyone jumped to get the first picture of…nothing. Absolutely nothing of note. Sure, she had an incredibly attractive body, but there wasn't anything to it that they hadn't seen before, and that made everyone angry. But no one was angrier than the workers who now had to clean up a mess caused by people pretending to shop in their store.

"Was that really worth all of this trouble?" Alejandro asked as they walked away from the store, having been forbidden from ever setting foot inside of it again. "Yes, playing with the minds of others is always a good time, but what if we ever needed to go in there for a real occasion?"

"Knowing that all those places that used those pictures of me are seriously going to have their credibility rocked is worth any amount of trouble." It took a few moments for the second half of what her boyfriend said to get to Heather, and once she got it, she playfully smacked his arm. "Hey, don't say anything like that. I don't want there to be a real reason for me to be wearing your baggy-ass jackets, aside from messing with people."

"And aside from not freezing when you have to go out, yes?"

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. We'll never need to go back to this place, so it works out. End of discussion, and I mean it."

"Yes, _mi amor_ , whatever you say." His sly grin, which she noticed, told her that he was not going to give up on the idea of them someday needing a reason to go there.

* * *

 **A/N: Originally posted to Tumblr on October 29th, 2014.**

 **I realize that I have a _lot_ of backlogged Aleheather fics that I've been posting lately. Would it make sense if I said that 1) they're my favorite Total Drama ship, 2) I find them incredibly easy to write about, and 3) none of these fics are related in any way?**


End file.
